The Deal Sourcing Perspective
- Schimpf Group
- Dec 5, 2025
- 1 min read
In the current market, everyone is chasing "Tech-Enabled Services." Consequently, everyone is overpaying for mediocre code.
Smart capital—the kind we advise—is doing the opposite. They are hunting for "Paper-Based Services."
The "Paper Premium"
Why buy a company that has already optimized its operations? You are paying a premium for someone else's work. The real alpha lies in finding the business with $2M in durable EBITDA that is still running on clipboards, whiteboards, and gut instinct.
These businesses are often discounted because they look "unsophisticated." To us, they look like opportunity.
The "Invisible Lever"
We call this "Deal Flow Asymmetry." The market ignores the fragmented, unglamorous service provider because they lack a "digital story."
When we run a Value Discovery Sprint on these targets, we aren't looking for a reason to say "No." We are looking for the "Invisible Lever."
Can we plug in a $50k AI tool to automate 30% of the admin work?
Can we unify the customer data to drive 20% more recurring revenue?
If the answer is "Yes," we can often model a 2–3x synergy simply by modernizing the plumbing.
Buy the Chaos, Fix the Order
Don't be afraid of the messy back office. That mess is where the margin expansion is hiding. If the underlying service is essential (recession-resistant) and the revenue is recurring, the "chaos" is just a governance problem waiting to be solved.
And solving governance problems is exactly what we do.
